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Unique online experiments find success really does breed success

29 April 2014

Success
really does breed success – up to a point – researchers from UCL and Stony
Brook University have found, following a series of unique on-line experiments.

For
decades, it has been observed that similar people experience divergent success
trajectories, with some repeatedly succeeding and others repeatedly failing.
Some suggest initial success can catalyze further achievements, creating a
positive feedback loop, while others attribute a string of successes to
inherent talent. To test these views the researchers conducted four experiments that measured the impact of experimental
support – such as a donation or positive endorsement – on subsequent success.

They found
that success was more likely to follow initial assistance, with crowd-funders
on kickstarter.com arbitrarily given an initial donation about twice as likely
to receive further contributions as others who only received funding through
standard routes. In the ideological arena, the granting of a dozen signatures
to a randomly selected petition on change.org led to the project attracting
another endorsement more often than petitions that did not receive the
orchestrated support. However, the magnitude of the support offered had
little effect on the outcome.

Lead
author on the paper, Dr Arnout van de Rijt (Institute for Advanced
Computational Science, Stony Brook University) said: “Theoretically, it’s hard
to see if the ‘success breeds success’ (SBS) effect exists - it could be that
it reflects genuine ability. To tease out where the success comes from, we did
experiments that gave artificial help to some people and not others.

“In
real-life environments, we gave success to some people in the form of a
donation, ideological support, an endorsement or high status and found that
these arbitrarily favoured people were more successful at the end than others
not given this preferred treatment.”

In
the first experiment, the researchers donated funding to 100 of 200 new,
unfunded projects on the crowd-funding website kickstarter.com and monitored
the level of later funding. 39% of projects without the initial experimental
donation attracted future donations, compared with 70% of those given the
experimental donation – almost two times more.

Our research has implications for the success of initiatives to counter inequality and create a more meritocratic society.

Dr Soong Moon Kang (UCL Management Science & Innovation)

The
second experiment involved the website epinions.com, for which reviewers are
paid for evaluations of new products according to how helpful website visitors
rate their reviews. 90% of reviews which received experimental endorsement were
rated as ‘very helpful’ within two weeks of treatment, compared to 77% in the
sample without the initial boost.

In the
third test, a random subset of the top 1% most productive editors on the website
Wikipedia.org were conferred an award. During the observation period of five
months, 31% of the editors without this start received a status award, whereas
40% of those given an initial status award attracted at least one more other
award.

The fourth
test used the petition website change.org, where people seek support from the
general public for social and political goals through electronic signature
campaigns. The researchers reviewed 200 early-stage campaigns and granted a
dozen signatures to 100 campaigns chosen at random. They found that 52% of
individuals who did not benefit from the signature package received at least
one more signature, compared with 66% of those given an extra 12 signatures for
the experiment.

However,
when the research team carried out a second study to investigate whether
success increases in proportion to the help given, they found that, for
example, giving twice as much funding does not provide twice as much success.

Dr Soong
Moon Kang (UCL Management Science & Innovation) said:

“Our
research has implications for the success of initiatives to counter inequality
and create a more meritocratic society. It also suggests that these don’t need
to be big or costly to help: it’s the initial boost that matters. We also find
that interventions have much more effect on those coming from very little.”